paya

Burmese pagodas, or paya, taught me something about architecture.  I have a basically modern, western view of architecture - not surprisingly.  When I think about - or appreciate - the exterior form of a building, I think in large part of enclosure and purpose.  Enclosure: how is the exterior space resolving the problem of packaging the needed interior spaces.  Purpose: what is the function of the building - a consideration partly bound up in the question of enclosure.

In short, form follows function - the familiar formula.  Obviously there is more to my view of architecture than that, but that is a substantial part.

Burmese paya force me to think outside that formula.  First, the most typical and prominent type of paya has no interior spaces - it is a solid mass.  Second, its function chiefly to serve as an object of religious devotion - that is, to be looked at a certain way.  The modernist use of function to interpret or solve the visual breaks down under these two facts.

(To be sure, most paya entomb relics - sometimes of great importance, sometimes simply included in order to make the pagoda complete.  So I understand that there is something inside and that the paya functions as a kind of casket.  But these facts don't change my point because this sort of enclosure tells you nothing about exterior shape - because the things enclosed are so insignificant in mass relative to the whole paya that they tell you nothing about shape and because such a massive casket tells you nothing about the thing enclosed - any shape would work.)

So, what to make of a paya architecturally?  I think you have to think of them as highly elaborated devotional mounds.  (Some early paya are simply hemispherical mounds - others are sort of blobs - like Bupaya in Bagan.)

Well, first it is a raised mound - the foundation became square.  Second, it has a tapering, round top, or point, usually hatted with a "hti".  Square base, conical top.  That's the idea but without more it wouldn't look very good.

The builders wanted to integrate the square base with the cylindrical top, and they also wanted to complicate the ascending cone, to make it look good.  The basic task is to circle the square (going from the bottom up, which is certainly how you look at a paya, rather than top down).  Often this is done with elaborated octagons - beginning as squares with clipped corners at the bottom, and then modifying in ascending terraces towards a more rounded shape.  These complexes of octaganal terraces, almost square at the bottom, almost round by the time they give way to the actually round middle stages of the paya, can be very beautiful indeed.

The next task is to draw the cone into bulb-like sections that look good and to apply some decoration (roundels, crenellation, florets, etc.) that embellishes but does not overwhelm.  The effect, at its best, can be both somewhat flowerlike (like the bud of a waxy flower like a tulip or lily) and somehow anthropomorphic - almost like the shoulders of a person giving way to the neck, then the head.

So, it comes down to proportion, the quality of the transition from base to spire, and the beauty of the banding, bulbing and sculptural decoration.  Shwedagon comes out very well by these standards, as does Ananda. 

And there is a sort of template - well-funded modern paya tend to show up in Shwedagon-like proportions that offer no novelty, and often no delight, but are competent, pleasing and safe.  With these, the eye therefore is drawn chiefly to the quality of execution, use of materials, and selection of site.